


wrong side of reality

by taakofromtaz (AmazingSuperiority)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO TAG THIS, Secret Santa, Trans Taako (The Adventure Zone), but nothing for the dialogue from any of the canon scenes i used, i spent and hour reading transcripts to see descriptions of the new rooms they get, introspective, thats just how we do, umbra staff, vignette style sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 07:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmazingSuperiority/pseuds/taakofromtaz
Summary: taako has an imaginary friend named lup





	wrong side of reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrrhlc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/gifts).



> this is my secret santa fic for tumblr user defcnestrate! (sorry if this was a little late. i had unforseen events impede my plans to write before the deadline)
> 
> (i had to do some investigating but i think i tagged the right person. if this isnt you, let me know, pyrrhlc!!)
> 
> happy candlenights!!!!
> 
> title from "young and meanace" by fall out boy
> 
> (did a little beta work. fixed some typos, added a few words)

Ever since Taako was little, he had an imaginary friend. She was an elf like him and trans like him and looked just like him with the mismatched eyes and blonde hair except it was like a mirror. She knew everything he was going through because she was going through it too.

He’s too old for that now, but sometimes, in his weakest moments, he likes to pretend she’s still with him.

Her name was Lup and he liked to pretend he was a twin.

 

Something about the Umbra Staff makes him think of his childhood imaginary friend. _She would use something this ridiculous_ , he thinks one night when trancing is impossible. He wraps his arms around the staff and closes his eyes.

 _This is weird_ , he thinks. _She isn’t real_. The staff is warm and he likes to think that imaginary Lup would like fire. Useful fire for those cold and sleepless nights on the road. Useful fire for keeping raiders off his back it the scariest, darkest nights. Useful fire to cook something _just right_ even without a professional kitchen.

Lup would play with fire and Taako would change the world to match.

 

Taako doesn’t remember the last time he had a room to himself. A normal kind of remembering this time, instead of the weirdly huge gaps in his mind that made him sick and sad and lonely. The first thing he does is throw himself on the bed that’s big enough for at least three of him and roll around on top of the comforter until he can get over the fact that it’s perfect.

The next thing he does is scatter his belongings all over the room, followed by an incredibly brief bout of panic wherein he picks it all back up and leaves it in a heap beside the bed instead. The bathroom is next on his inspection tour. It’s a simple affair but fairly elegant. Taako is impressed and a little awed. (He learns over the next several days that the bathroom is his and his alone and he has a hard time not rubbing it into Magnus and Merle’s faces.)

When he finally collapses on the clean bedspread, still coming down from the high of having such nice new digs, he allows himself to think about Goldcliff, about Sloane and Hurley, about the truly massive fireball he’d managed that ended that fight.

His breath hitches and he shoves his fists against his eyes.

This isn’t what he wants to think about. He doesn’t want to think about the looks Hurley and Sloane gave each other all the way to the end, he doesn’t want to think about the hug that Hurley gave him, doesn’t want to think about how he melted so completely in her hold that he didn’t even notice that she was giving him her harness, doesn’t want to think about the way the silverpoint crept through their veins and turned their blood to ash right in front of him.

The thought sends a cold jolt down his spine and the irrational thought that he needs to find the Umbra Staff _now_.

He finds it hooked around the footboard and he snatches it quickly, pulling it closer before scrambling his way under the covers, still fully dressed. He wraps himself around the staff and presses his forehead against it. It’s warm, almost hot, and suddenly Taako’s reminded of how filthy he is, covered in a layer of sweat and grim from the battlewagon race and the battle with Sloane afterward.

(After the three of them finished their customary post-mission trip to the Fantasy Costco, they’d been stopped by Avi and escorted down to their new rooms, a private suite with its own elevator and a common room featuring a portal to hell—aka a giant floor window—overlooking the planet below. There’s a bedroom for each of them, already assigned, and a bathroom at one end of the hallway, opposite and excluding Taako’s en-suite. There’s a fairly large kitchen attached to the common room, separated only by an island bar with three stools. All in all, it’s pretty tight, but they hadn’t had the chance to clean up before being left to their new digs.)

Taako can’t bring himself to care that he’s getting the new sheets dirty. He’s already a disaster, what’s it matter what he gets up to in the comforts of his own room (and isn’t that just wild? His own room. Wow.).

“You did good today,” he says out loud, keeping his voice down just in case there’s someone standing outside his room. “You cast some bombass spells and saved a shitton of people today.” He sighs and moves the umbrella back to smack himself in the forehead with it. “But gods, Taako, you’re still a fucking _idiot_.”

The Umbra Staff quivers and Taako squeezes it tighter. For a moment, he imagines it’s a neck in his hands and he stares at his white knuckled grip. He takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes.

“You’re not real, Lup. You’re just something I made up because I can’t stand to be alone.” His eyes sting behind his lids and he struggles to keep his breathing steady. “But _gods_ I wish you were.”

Taako lays long enough to almost fall asleep. He moves to curl into a ball and his ribs ache his clothes pull weird and he sighs, reluctant to leave his warm cocoon. He forces himself to get up and peel off the dusty, sweat soaked shirt and jacket and binder and he kicks his shoes and pants to the side with a growl. Luckily, whoever it was that set their rooms up managed to stock the dresser with his clothes.

Donning an oversized sweater and a pair of shorts, Taako crawls back into bed and tries not to think about Sloane and Hurley’s dying faces.

Taako’s never loved someone that much.

 

L-U-P.

Taako tries so hard to pretend the letters on the wall mean nothing to him, tries so hard to pretend that L-U-P is a string of letters he’s never seen before, never uttered like a prayer in a moment of weakness, never crossed his mind or passed his lips or stuck with him as his only companion against horror and heartbreak and crushing loneliness.

No. The word means nothing to Taako. It’s not a name. It’s just a word.

 _There’s no mystery here_ , he wants to say. He wants to shake the boy detective, wants to turn him away from the letters, from the thought, the idea of Lup as an entity. _She’s mine_ , he wants to say. _You can’t have her_. The words _not again_ linger in his mind for far longer than they should.

 

Madame Director calls Taako to her office the day after L-U-P. Taako tries really hard to ignore how worried he is that something’s going to go terribly wrong and forces himself to act as casual and put-off as he possibly can. He wants to pretend that this is just an annoying formality. He can’t. He doesn’t want Madame Director, please, dear gods, _anyone but Lucretia._

She has her stern “I know you did something so don’t lie to me” face on and Taako feels his skin crawl with irritation. He hates her holier-than-thou attitude sometimes. Just because she has a magic jellyfish that can unmake entire lives doesn’t make her better than the rest of them.

“Taako,” she says, and sometimes he hates the way she says his name, too. He hates the way the syllables sound familiar coming from her mouth, the gentle way her lips wrap around it, like a suffocating hug from a bear that wants to eat him.

“Director,” he says back, just to be petulant. He knows why he’s here and he refuses to break. He’s allowed his secrets, his privacy. Sure this is the best gig he’s ever had, but by the gods does he feel trapped here more than some of the time.

“Care to explain what happened yesterday?” She quirks a brow at him and he gives her a deadpan stare, unimpressed.

“Oops,” he says with a careless shrug, entirely unapologetic.

“This wasn’t on purpose, was it? It wasn’t an act of petty vandalism?” She’s the picture of calm and grace and as much as Taako wants to keep poking this lion, the longer he sits under her stare, the more anxious he gets.

“Listen, I dunno what the whole deal with this ‘luhp’ thing is, but I have other things I’d rather be doing,” he says, forcing himself to mispronounce Lup’s name. The further away from her he can paint himself, the better the situation will turn out. Experience has taught him this time and time again.

Lucretia looks exhausted and for a moment he feels concerned. Smug satisfaction quickly takes its place and he moves as if to stand when she remains silently for a solid minute.

“Look, are we done here? Can I go?” Taako gestures to the door with the Umbra Staff.

The Director’s eyes lock onto the staff and Taako can see her shoulders tense. He moves the umbrella his other hand and crosses his arms in front of it. “Just tell me _why_.”

Taako purses his lips and considers his answer. He turns and strides for the door, uncrossing his arms to grab the handle. “Look, Director,” he begins, fighting back the urge to call her _Creesh_ for reasons he’s not entirely sure of. “Whatever happened yesterday? That wasn’t me.” He twists the knob, pulls the door open, takes a step out. “And Lup is just something I made up as a kid. Don’t worry about it.”

He closes the door and leaves. He doesn’t look back.

 

For only a second, Taako thinks he see Lup with him, there in that white space. When he turns to look, all he can see is the red dirt of Refuge and he doesn’t think about her again until he dies.  
_I hope she’s not dying, too_ , he thinks, and then, _but dying’s never stopped her before_.

Every subsequent death, he finds himself searching for a glimpse of her. One time it’s a flash of blonde hair. Another time it’s the tips of pointed ears. Yet another is a ghost of a smirk.

The color red follows her and when he looks, it’s dirt and he’s in Refuge again.

Lup would have liked Roswell, probably, and definitely Ren. He hopes they can meet one day. He forgets he ever had the thought.

 

The Umbra Staff tries to kill Kravitz and that’s just fucking _rude_. Why does it have to act up like this? Why can’t it just be like any other cool staff? (Taako thinks that if he could ever make a staff it would have a blade on the end. Not because he would use it like a sword, but it would look super intimidating and maybe an enemy will think it’s a melee weapon and assume he’s weak when he’s anything but.)

The whole thing about something undead makes Taako’s skin crawl. He doesn’t like the feeling of not being able to trust the Umbra Staff. He’s come to rely on its steady presence to ground him during his lowest points and he doesn’t want anything to come between that. Fuck the rest of the base if it means sacrificing personal comfort.

Why would a dark spirit risk being discovered to save Taako’s life so many times? If there is a lich—and gods, maybe there _is_ and he just never knew because they used to own the staff before him—then the only thing he can do is hope it won’t escape and try to murder him. But, again, why save his life and help him get stronger? Why not just kill him immediately?

Kravitz may be hot, and he may be right about an undead spirit, but he’s wrong about it being a danger to him.

(Lup would never hurt him.)

 

The fireball that Angus shoots out is huge, bigger than the little boy is capable of casting or even handling. When he speaks up, babbling excuses about how he couldn’t possibly have cast that spell, something clicks in Taako.

“I know, I know,” he says, and he hopes he doesn’t sound like a weirdo because honestly? He wasn’t listening.

He’s too busy thinking about how to free Lup from the Umbra Staff.

Why didn’t he think of this before? It’s a miracle it never happened on accident even, but here, and now, Taako realizes that he has to break her prison to set her free.

From the moment he drank the baby’s ichor to the second he snaps the Umbra Staff over his knee, he had managed to convince himself that Lup was still a candy-coated dream. She seemed too good to be true, too good to be real, she had to be fake, she could only exist in the imagination of Taako’s intense, lonely need to never be alone. There was no way she was real and somehow he’d managed to convince the others that she was.

But now she is. She’s real and wonderful and _phantasmal_ and _resplendent_ and—

Taako feels like he can breathe for the first time in over a decade.

 _Thank the gods_ , he thinks, eyes burning and tears rolling down his face faster than he can think to stop them. _She’s real. Thank the gods_.

And then she puts him on blast but he’s laughing and he’s happy.

She’s real.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are appreciated!!!


End file.
